Learning Pains

The last time I decided to write something concerning education I primarily focused upon the economic problem of the current state of higher education, the fact that it has become unbelievably expensive to pursue a private university degree.

However, of the problems which face modern higher education, cost is both minor and symptomatic, a nasty boil of an underlying issue. The most significant failing of The Modern University (and consequently of the entire educational artifice) is its fundamental lack of purpose.

This is so incredibly important, educationally and to our nation as a whole, because educational purpose is so different from other institutional purposes. Whereas churches and businesses, to name just two, have specific and narrow purposes, such as the accumulation of converts or profit, the University ought to seek truth, both as an absolute entity and codified as a rational order by which all men can live.

Such a rational attempt to order the universe is necessary, and indeed essential, because human progress is directly linked to an understanding of our surroundings. We are able to achieve little when we understand little, when our surroundings begin to make sense, we become more able to change them. This can most clearly be shown by the difference between an Archimedes's screw (ancient simple machine used in irrigation) and the Atom bomb. Human abstract knowledge, the difference between experimentation and true science, has immense practical value.

Even more so, the truth has a sort of self-evident importance. While in general I am against claiming self-evidence in a rash manner, all real truth has value. Not valuing truth is equivalent to not valuing existence, being as such things are merely reflections of each other.

Real search for this truth will always be at the center of human life. Our understandings of it, religious, political, scientific, and philosophical must necessarily direct and focus human activity. Since the idea of the university is of nothing more then an institution seeking knowledge of the truth, then the University (even more then government) will be the center of power and change in humanity.

In modern times the idea of the University and the actual entity have parted company. With schools either loading up with undergrads and athletics, or filling seats with grad students, the concept of a purposeful institution committed to both scholarship and holistic education has left us - perhaps for good.

Yet education does not have to be this way. For the vast majority of students neither suited nor inclined for real study, institutions specializing in business and engineering (together with a smattering of communication skills) would almost certainly do as good a job. The simple fact of the matter is that there are a huge number of people (almost certainly a majority) who are going to University without the slightest intention of attending a University. The prestige and desirability of these institutions creates a huge surplus of demand for something entirely different then what a school is supposed to provide. It doesn't take much of an economist to see what happens then.

Some might say that this is equivalent to wimping out, claiming that realliving price pressure will be enough to 'help our children'. Of course it won't be. Prices will likely remain high, or at least higher then I would wish. Yet, lamenting the base facts of economics is rather equivalent to threatening law suits concerning the weather (although the 'Green movement' may be trending in that direction). Education will always remain valuable, and prices will always reflect that value. The best we can hope for is to streamline the process and make the price mechanism as efficient as possible (which probably means the destruction of many scholarships and loans as well), so that the free market can strike a proper balance. Any more then that would not only be immoral, it would also be futile.